METRO DIGEST || Stalking awareness roundtable Thursday

Stalking awareness

YOUNGSTOWN

COMPASS Family & Community Services and the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office are offering a stalking awareness roundtable from 10 a.m. to noon Thursday for law enforcement, advocates, legal professionals, prosecutors, judges and magistrates.

January is National Stalking Awareness Month, a time to focus on a crime that affects 7.5 million victims each year. Stalking is a crime in all 50 states, U.S. Territories and the District of Columbia. In one of five cases, stalkers use weapons to harm or threaten victims, who can suffer anxiety, social dysfunction and severe depression.

Also, stalking is difficult to recognize, investigate and prosecute because it is not a single, easily identifiable crime but a series of acts or course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause that person fear. Communities that understand stalking, however, can support victims and combat the crime, said Joe Caruso, COMPASS chief executive officer and president. For information, contact Jennifer Varley Gray at 330-782-5664.

Judicial seat filing

YOUNGSTOWN

Carla Baldwin, a Mahoning County juvenile court magistrate, filed her petitions Tuesday to run for the open Youngstown Municipal Court judicial seat.

Anthony Sertick Jr., the city court magistrate, is also running for the position.

Both will run in the Democratic primary. Next Wednesday is the filing deadline for the May 2 primary.

Judge Robert Milich cannot run for re-election this year because of the state’s age-restriction law on judges.

Execution date sought

WARREN

Prosecutors have asked the Ohio Supreme Court to set an execution date for a man convicted in the killing of a Warren woman and the rape and murder of her daughter 17 years ago.

The Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office noted that Stanley Theodore Adams has “exhausted all of his state and federal court reviews of his conviction and death sentence and has not sought a stay. ... Accordingly, the state of Ohio respectfully moves this court for an order and death warrant setting an execution date.”

Adams murdered 43-year-old Esther Cook, beating her to death in October 1999. He also beat and raped Cook’s 12-year-old daughter, Ashley, and strangled her with an electrical cord. In a separate case at the time, Adams also was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the rape and murder of 40-year-old Roslyn Taylor of Hubbard Township. According to documents, her “partially clad body was discovered ... in a fire-damaged automobile.” The state is scheduled to restart executions next month.

I-80 lane restrictions

AUSTINTOWN

Interstate 80 eastbound between state Route 46 and Interstate 680 will have various lane restrictions between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. today for drainage repairs, the Ohio Department of Transportation has announced.

No re-election for Warren’s Polivka

WARREN

Danielle Polivka, 5th Ward councilwoman since July, will not seek election to her own term on council this year. She will finish out the rest of 2017.

“It has been an honor to serve both the city of Warren and the citizens of the 5th Ward as their councilperson,” she said in a statement.

“I have enjoyed the experience tremendously; however, I have decided not to seek re-election so I can dedicate myself to my studies full-time.”

Polivka, 18 at the time she was appointed, got the position in a vote of six members of the Trumbull County Democratic Party’s Central Committee for the 5th Ward. Her father, Dan Polivka, chairman of the county Democratic Party, was one of the six voters.

The deadline to file candidacy for the May 2 primary is Feb. 1.

Candidate review

WARREN

A meeting notice from the Geauga Trumbull Solid Waste Management District says its hiring committee will have a review of candidates for its open director’s position at the start of its meeting at 9 a.m. today, followed by interviews with candidates.

The meeting will take place in the district’s conference room on Enterprise Drive Northwest.

A review of candidates also took place at a gathering of committee members Jan. 17 that the group’s attorney said was not an official meeting because not enough of its members attended. The Vindicator and its attorney disagreed.

Committee members later said the committee had narrowed down its candidates from 24 to about seven, apparently at the Jan. 17 gathering, and planned to interview the finalists Wednesday.

Man faces drug charges

YOUNGSTOWN

Reports said police Monday pulled over a car suspected of being involved in an accident on the East Side and found suspected heroin and suspected crack cocaine inside.

Police were called at about 3:30 p.m. to the Albert Street area on the East Side for a report of an accident with injuries where one car left after the accident. Reports said the car suspected of being involved drove past the accident. It had heavy front- end damage, and police pulled it over.

Reports said the driver, Ernest Cottle II, 32, of Youngstown, admitted being involved but thought it was OK to leave because he thought the other driver was leaving. When police searched the car, they found the suspected drugs. Cottle was booked into the Mahoning County jail on charges of possession of heroin, possession of cocaine and traffic charges.